We were fortunate enough to be able to enjoy all our grandchildren over the holidays and that is a blessing all by itself.

I'm amazed at the kindness and generosity of people in our area. All the sheriff's departments and local police departments have special fundraisers for needy children. Every town has a Christmas dinner for the elderly and the homeless, there are parades and celebrations everywhere, and baskets of food and children's gifts are distributed by literally dozens of churches. What an absolutely terrific place to live!

Now I want to vent on a pet peeve. If you've watched any prime time television shows in the past few weeks, you've seen commercial after commercial by the ASPCA and the HSUS. They always seem to depict the absolutely most pitiful animals they can find and then they assure us that someone is abusing an animal every 60 seconds. What they want from us is $18 a month to help their cause. The problem I have with this is that when you look at the structure of these organizations, we find that only a few cents of your $18 gets to animal shelters. The bulk of the donation is applied to "administrative costs" and of course, the millions of dollars in national advertising costs. Ask the people in our local shelters if they are able to access any of that money for our needs locally and they will set you straight in a hurry!

Donate to our local shelters if you want to make a difference. Every town around has a shelter. Many of them are funded totally by donations and most of them do their very best to place an animal with a home. I guess I just have a hard time watching commercials asking for monthly endowments that are sent to political action committees and not used for the purpose they are intended.

We were at a legislative update presented by New Mac on Thursday. They had a great program set up to show us how power is restored when wind storms or ice cause disruptions. They have an ongoing program of tree trimming to prevent limbs from breaking lines also. Their presentation showed us how power is distributed from the generating facility all the way to our homes and businesses. A lot of the time when we have a catastrophic event, the main transmission lines are damaged. When that occurs, the emphasis is always to restore the main lines before the crews can work on local lines. We sometimes are unaware that they must restore service from the power plant all the way to our homes. They also explained how other companies will come to help us when we need them. There is an agreement between most of the companies to provide help when needed and that allows all of us to get power restored more quickly when disaster strikes. My hat is off to New Mac and the rest of the co-ops in our area for the hard work they do to make our lives better!

Page 2 of 2 - Jane and I want to wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year.

Bill Lant represents the people of Newton and McDonald counties in the Missouri House of Representatives. Contact him locally at 437-8223, his Jefferson City office at (573) 751-9801 or email him at bill.lant@house.mo.gov.